The John Fante Reader by John Fante & Stephen Cooper

Author:John Fante & Stephen Cooper [Fante, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

FRANK EDGINGTON AND I BECAME BUDDIES. He loved the flip side of Hollywood, the bars, the mean streets angling off Hollywood Boulevard to the south. I was glad to tag along as he took in the saloons along El Centro, McCadden Place, Wilcox, and Las Palmas. We drank beer and played the pinball games. Edgington was a pinball addict, a tireless devotee, drinking beer and popping the pinballs. Sometimes we went to the movies. He knew all the fine restaurants, and we ate and drank well. On weekends we toured the Los Angeles basin, the deserts, the foothills, the outlying towns, the harbor. One Saturday we drove to Terminal Island, a strip of white sand in the harbor. The canneries were there and we saw the weatherbeaten beach houses where Filipinos and Japanese lived. It was an enchanting place, lonely, decrepit, picturesque. I saw myself in one of the shacks with my typewriter. I longed for the chance to work there, to write in that lonely, forsaken place, where the sand half covered the streets, and the porches and fences hung limp in the wind. I told Frank I wanted to live there and write there.

“You’re crazy,” he said. “This is a slum.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “It gives me a warm feeling.”

At the studio we indulged another of Frank Edgington’s obsessions—child games. We played pitch, old maid, Parcheesi, and Chinese checkers. We played for small stakes-five cents a game. When Frank was alone he worked on a short story for the New Yorker. When I was alone I sat in my office hungering for Thelma Farber. She was impregnable. Sometimes she even denied me a hello, and I was thoroughly squelched and breathing hard. Harry Schindler ordered his old films and Thelma and I sat in the projection room watching them unroll. I tried to sit next to her and she promptly moved two seats away. She was a bitch, unreasonably hostile. I felt like vermin.

After two weeks I picked up my first paycheck, $600. It was a staggering sum. Three hundred dollars a week for doing nothing! I knocked on Schindler’s door and thanked him for the check.

“It’s okay,” he grinned. “We want you happy. That’s the whole idea.”

“But I’m not doing anything. I’m going crazy. Give me something to write.”

“You’re doing fine. I need you in case of emergency. I got to have a backup man, someone with talent. Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a great job. Keep up the good work. Cash the check and have fun.”

“Let me write you a western.”

“Not yet,” Schindler said. “Just do what you’re doing and leave the rest to me.”

Suddenly I choked up. I wanted to cry. I turned and walked out, brushed past Thelma and into my office. I sat at my desk crying. I didn’t want charity. I wanted to be brilliant on paper, to turn fine phrases and dig up emotional gems for Schindler to see. Choking back my sobs I hurried down the hall to Edgington’s office, and flung myself into a chair.

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